Forget the Vaccines. The most exciting guitar band in the UK now (no, not more landfill indie) is likely the Palma Violets - they only have one single out, really, but the NME hype machine is chugging overtime on them. Okay, but this time it is deserved. Fully fresh, and yet resonant with a variety of traditional tropes as if plucked from The Smiths, The Ramones and The Replacements, 'Best of Friends' manages to become, in its classic 3 minutes and thirty-three seconds, one of the best indie guitar songs of the 21st century. Full stop.
THAT HANDSOME MAN A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought. Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
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